


Never Caught, Never Turned Back

by Hoborg



Category: Native American/First Nations Mythology, Thelma and Louise (1991)
Genre: Canon Continuation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 19:12:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5978071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoborg/pseuds/Hoborg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WARNING: This fic begins at the very moment where the movie ends.  Reading even the first sentence will spoil the ending of the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Caught, Never Turned Back

When Louise sends the car flying over the edge of the Grand Canyon, she’s expecting a few seconds of exhilaration, and then … well, nothing after that.

She is definitely _not_ expecting the car to land neatly on two lanes of blacktop, a highway where there can’t be a highway, no one would build a highway _inside the Grand Canyon_ , and yet here it is, here they are; before she can even really register that, she’s followed it down to a tunnel opening in the canyon wall, and through, and beyond: desert plain, sunset, and not a single cop behind them. The road is as empty as the desert. The signs say Interstate 19.

Thelma has her eyes squeezed shut and she’s making a squeaky noise. Louise reaches over and pokes her in the side.

“EEeewhat? Huh? What happened? Where are we?”

“ _No_ clue. I don’t know how we’re not dead right now, but instead we’re here. Wherever here is. Canyon’s gone, cops are gone … you see Interstate 19 anywhere on that map?”

Thelma fumbles with the map.

“Yeah here it is … no, that can’t be right, that’s nowhere _near_ the Grand Canyon.”

“Well that’s what the signs say.”

“I can see that.” Thelma shrugs. “Does it matter?”

“Nah.” Louise keeps driving.

* * *

It’s twilight, and there’s a lone light on the horizon, the first anything they’ve seen but road and desert. It’s a lamp post, they’re coming to a crossroads. Interstate 19 meets Tower Road.

Louise had thought interstate highways never had crossroads.

There’s an old, old woman sitting on a log, right under the light. She watches as they pull up.

“Hi there!” Thelma calls out. “Um. We’re lost, could you tell us where we are?”

“A good question,” the old woman says. “And you may also be wondering how it is you’re not dead, and where all them cops went, and such things.”

“Yes. Yes, I am wondering those things, and now I am also wondering how you know about them,” Louise says maybe a little too harshly.

“Well, I suppose it’s my fault you’re here to begin with,” the old woman says. “I do hate to see anyone feelin’ they’ve got only one choice left. Especially when they’ve just figured out how to _live_. And especially when they display a remarkable talent for armed robbery and creative mayhem. Do you know how _rare_ that is?”

“Right, _who the hell are you?_  ”

“Oh, you can call me Granny, most everyone does, these days.”

Louise gives ‘Granny’ her nastiest stink-eye. ‘Granny’ gives her back a big fat snaggletoothed grin. “I knew I liked you.”

“No, but please, tell us what’s happened to us, and where we are now,” Thelma says.

“I’m gettin’ to it, I’m gettin’ to it,” Granny says. “To begin with, you’re not dead, but you’re not alive either. You’re in between. That’s what this place is: in between. I brought you here so’s I could weave you a few more choices than you had an hour ago.”

Thelma shrugs. “Okay, what choices?”

“Three of ’em.” Granny points further down the road. “First, you can stick to the choice you already made. Go on down the road, you’ll reach the clearing at the end of the path. You’ll find whatever rest you may have earned.

“Second, you can go back.” She points the opposite way. “Back to Friday evening. On your way to your fishin’ weekend. You never stopped at that roadhouse, you never met Harlan, and everything goes on just as it was.

“But I don’t think you want either of those, so here’s a third: turn aside, and find a new beginning.” She points along Tower Road. “It won’t be restful … or routine. I think it’ll suit you fine.”

Louise says, “What, exactly, would we be doing?”

“Using those rare skills for good,” Granny says. “Some banks need robbin’, some towns need shakin’ up, some lawmen need remindin’ that order is not the same as justice. You’ll find them on your way, an’ the details are up to you.”

“Seems like we’d still be on the run.”

“Not always. There’ll be weekends on the beach, and in time, somewhere you can call home. Or you might find you’re comfortable on the road. Some do.”

“Not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant—they’ll never catch you again.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because that’s the legend you’ve earned yourselves. Never caught, never turned back.”

Thelma says, “Legend? We’re not legends.”

“So sure of that?” Granny says. “After everything you’ve seen and done on your way here?”

They both hesitate.

Thelma looks at Louise and says “Well, for sure I don’t want to go back … but I’m not ready to be dead, either.”

Louise smiles. “When you put it that way, it’s an easy choice, isn’t it?”

Thelma nods. “We’ll be taking Tower Road,” she says to Granny.

“I thought you might,” Granny says. “And as it happens I’m going that way myself—mind giving an old woman a lift?”

Louise frowns. “One condition: you tell us your actual _name_.”

“It is, in fact, Grandmother,” Granny says, hopping over the side of the car into the backseat as nimbly as anyone. “Grandmother Spider.”


End file.
